Skalkottas: The Maiden and Death - ballet suite, etc.

2010

“BIS's Skalkottas cycle started very well and gets better with each release. The First Piano Concerto's characteristic use of a family of noterows, rather than just one, may have ignited the rift between the apprentice composer and his teacher, Schoenberg. The neo-classical elements can't have been to the latter's liking, either. Geoffrey Douglas Madge gives a barnstorming performance and the accompaniment is electrifying. The orchestra is heard at its best and in its own right in the suite from the folkballet The Maiden and Death (1938). Here Skalkottas's brilliant orchestration shines through in what's much more than a pre-run of The MaydaySpell. The idiom is less fragmentary than the latter; indeed, it suggests a Greek Miraculous Mandarin, if less overtly spectacular in sound or scandalous in plot.
The disc concludes with a further movement from the unfinished Second Symphonic Suite (1944-5; compare the Largo sinfonico on the first disc). This Ouvertüre concertante is pretty much what the title leads you to expect it to be, a superbly scored sonata-derivative, employing the composer's note-row-complex manner in a most attractive fashion.”